Researchers ask if survivor plasma can prevent coronavirus

Dr. Shmuel Shoham at Johns Hopkins University said:

As more rigorous testing of plasma treatments is underway, Shoreham launches a national survey asking the following logical questions: Giving plasma to survivors shortly after high-risk exposure to the virus causes illness. Can you stop it?

Needless to say, researchers at Hopkins and 15 other sites recruited health care workers, spouses of sick people, and residents of nursing homes when someone just got sick, “they want to crush it with buds I have said that.”

This is a rigorous study. 150 volunteers were randomly assigned to obtain either plasma from COVID-19 survivors containing antibodies that fight coronavirus, or normal plasma frozen prior to a pandemic, such as those used daily in hospitals. To do. Scientists track whether there are differences in who gets sick.

If it works, survivor plasma can have a significant effect until the vaccine arrives, and temporary immune-enhancing infusions are more likely to frequently protect high-risk people.

“They are paramedics, they are police officers, they are workers in the poultry industry, they are submarine naval officers,” Shoham yelled. “Can we fully protect them?”

The new coronavirus has infected more than 7 million people worldwide and killed more than 400,000 people. With no good cure yet, researchers are desperately studying everything from drugs that deal with other viruses to living plasma.

The historical evidence is rough, but the most famous use of convalescent plasma was during the 1918 flu pandemic. Recipients are reportedly less likely to die. Doctors are still shattering approaches to tackle outbreaks, such as the 2002 COVID-19 cousin SARS and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, but even with recent use, rigor No studies have been conducted.

When the body encounters new bacteria, it makes proteins called antibodies that are specifically targeted to fight infection. Antibodies float in the plasma — the yellowish liquid part of blood.

Since it takes weeks for antibodies to form, transfusion of someone else’s antibody is expected to help patients fight the virus before their immune system begins. One donation is usually divided into two or three treatments.

Also, as more and more people survive at COVID-19, there is a growing demand for plasma donations, which will ensure a sufficient stockpile even if plasma fails. In addition to traditional infusions, donations can be combined with high dose products. The manufacturer, Grifols, is producing its “hyperimmunoglobulin” dose for research that is set to begin next month.

Convalescent plasma seems to be safe to use, reported by Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic last month. His team tracked the first 5,000 plasma recipients in a program sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration. The program aided the use of treatments in the hospital, with few serious side effects found.

Can it help you recover? The clues come from the first 39 patients treated at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. The researchers compared each plasma recipient to four other COVID-19 patients. Patients with COVID-19 were given no plasma, but were of the same age and ill with the same amount of oxygen. The lead author of the study, Dr. Shawn Liu, said that those who were given plasma before they needed a ventilator were less likely to die than those who weren’t.

“We really tried to target patients early in the course, preferably within the first 1-2 weeks of the disease,” Liu said.

“During this time, I feel helpless as a doctor,” Liu added, stressing the need for more rigorous research, but he was pleased to try this first-stage study. It was “It’s painful to see people die. It’s horrifying and miserable.”

But the results of the first tightly controlled study were disappointing. A devastating hospital in Wuhan, China, compared critically ill patients with randomly assigned plasma or regular treatment, but lacked new patients as the virus fell.

According to a report from the Journal of the American Medical Association last week, only half of the planned 200 patients were enrolled, and more plasma recipients survived, but researchers accidentally wondered if that was the real difference. I could not distinguish it.

The real evidence comes from a rigorous ongoing study comparing patients who were assigned to receive survivor plasma or dummy therapy.

Further complicating the search for answers, COVID-19 survivors have varying levels of antibodies. And the researchers want to use what Hopkins Shoham calls what they call “high octane”, but don’t know who knows the optimal dose to test.

“About 20% of recovered patients and donors have a very strong immune system,” estimated Dr Michele Donato of the Hackensack University Medical Center.

Those are the people whose researchers want to become donors repeatedly.

“Our job as a human being is to take a step and contribute to society,” said Aubrey Crestwell, a 24-year-old living in Bear, Delaware.

One of the donations was sent to a friend of a hospitalized friend who said, “Weeping. I was overwhelmed just because my family really appreciated it.”

AP Video Journalist Kathy Young contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health Sciences Department is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. AP is solely responsible for all content.

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